ANADARKO, Okla. – After protests and petitions made the rounds, the Bureau of Indian Affairs’ Southern Plains regional office announced Tuesday that it will host a special election for the Kiowa Tribe.
“After four years of a broken government and apparently with no means for the Kiowa Tribe itself to reestablish its government, there is no recourse other than to invoke the tribal authority granted to the Bureau,” Regional Director Dan Deerinwater wrote in an open letter to Kiowa tribal citizens. “The toll the dispute has taken on the Kiowa Tribe and its members and the extended effect on the Comanche Nation and the Apache Tribe of Oklahoma has become unbearable and unreasonable.”
The federal government has not recognized a Kiowa election since December 2010. Since then, three of the eight business committee members have either resigned or simply quit showing up to meetings. Citing a carryover clause, the five remaining members have claimed that they are a legitimate business committee, a move Deerinwater derided as unfounded.
“We believe it was not the intent of the Kiowa members…to permit any person to be held over in office indefinitely,” he wrote.
Under the current Kiowa constitution, the tribe has a hearing board as its final arbiter, but it has not been fully staffed for an extended period, thus making it unable to intervene. The tribe’s election board does not have enough members to constitute a quorum and its office at the complex has been locked for several years, thus ruling out a legitimate election.
The tribe shares land in trust with the Comanche Nation, headquartered in Lawton, Oklahoma, and the Apache Tribe, based in Anadarko. That property is administered through a joint committee that has three representatives for each tribe. Thanks to its internal turmoil, the Kiowa Tribe has not sent representatives, thus preventing the committee from having quorum to conduct business.
No timeline or logistics have been announced yet for the election. In accordance with federal procedures, any appeals to the announcement have to be filed with the Interior Board of Indian Appeals within 30 days.
The move comes after two days of protests outside the Anadarko Agency, demanding the federal government take some form of action to resolve the gridlock. The announcement also comes as a petition continues to circulate among Kiowa voters to request an election to completely overhaul the tribe’s constitution.
The proposed constitution would keep the Kiowa Indian Council, which consists of all Kiowa citizens aged 21 and older and replace the tribe’s business committee and hearing board with a three-branch government similar to what is used by the Cherokee, Osage and Muscogee (Creek) Nations.
If adopted, the constitution would create six legislative districts within the boundaries of the former Kiowa-Comanche-Apache reservation and guarantee a seat for tribal citizens who live outside that area. Those districts would also be used for appointments to the tribe’s election board.
It would also empanel the first Kiowa court in memory and establish the framework for a Kiowa Supreme Court and trial court.
Open meetings about the proposed constitution have already been held in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and Norman, Oklahoma, with future meetings planned for Anadarko, Hobart, Oklahoma; Lawton, Oklahoma; and the tribe’s capitol city, Carnegie, Oklahoma.
